[stability]

[weloveshortvideos]

how do humans like it? 

[dixiethepixie]

Last part tho

[tinderofficial]

😱

[tepitome]

[phroyd]

Decency In The White House!

Brought to you by a Black American Family!

Phroyd

[offtospace]

show me the lie though

[thesweetishthuggishbone]

^Not a damn one

[sketchlock]

[fuckyeahcomicsbaby]

[i-am-but-a-humble-frenchfry]

@nosetriangle for your project if you want

[studyandfocus]

I LOVE THIS SO MUCH

[neurosciencenews]

In Genetic Decision Making, Proteins Learn to Listen to Each Other

Genes are regulated because they need to be. Factors that determine their transcription don’t tend to change, mainly because they have so many specific jobs to do. When scientists intervene in such complex and regimented structures, they tend to break things, creating a mess and making the results hard to understand.

The research is in Cell Reports. (full open access)

[neurosciencenews]

Genome Wide Sequencing Enables Treatment of Some Intellectual Disabilities

The researchers diagnosed 68 per cent of the 41 families in the study with the precise underlying genetic condition and, based on this, were able to offer targeted treatments to more than 40 per cent of cases. They also discovered 11 new disease genes and described new physical traits and symptoms associated with a number of known diseases.

The research is in NEJM. (full access paywall)

[did-you-know]

Sometimes gazelles jump with all 4 legs simultaneously off the ground while holding them stiff and straight. It’s called ‘stotting,’ and researchers have no idea why they do it. Source

[neurosciencestuff]

Shining Light on Brain Tumors

When operating on cancer, surgeons want to remove tumors and not healthy tissue. This is especially important and challenging when dealing with brain tumors, which are often spread out and mixed in with the healthy tissue. Now, researchers have shown that a well-established optics technique can reveal exactly where brain tumors are, producing images in less than a minute — unlike conventional methods that can take a whole day.

“The special thing about our images is that we showed they contain so much information,” said Marloes Groot of VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands. “When I showed these images to the pathologists that we work with, they were amazed.” Groot and her colleagues describe their work in the journal Biomedical Optics Express, from The Optical Society.

Pathologists typically use staining methods, in which chemicals like hematoxylin and eosin turn different tissue components blue and red, revealing its structure and whether there are any tumor cells. But for a definitive diagnosis this process can take up to 24 hours, which means surgeons may not realize some cancerous tissue has escaped from their attention until after surgery — requiring a second operation and more risk.

But with the new technique, the researchers don’t use any labeling or staining at all. Instead, they fire short, 200-femtosecond-long laser pulses into the tissue, and when three photons converge at the same time and place, the photons interact with the nonlinear optical properties of the tissue. Through well-known phenomena in optics called second and third harmonic generation, these interactions produce a single photon.

The key is that the incoming and outgoing photons have different wavelengths. The incoming photons are at 1200 nanometers, long enough to penetrate deep into the tissue. The single photon that is produced, however, is at 600 or 400 nanometers, depending on if it’s second or third harmonic generation. The shorter wavelengths mean the photon can scatter in the tissue. The scattered photon thus contains information about the tissue, and when it reaches a detector, in this case a high-sensitivity GaAsP photomultiplier tube, it reveals what the tissue looks like inside.

While other researchers have exploited this technique for other applications — to make images of insects and fish embryos, for example — this is the first time anyone has used it to analyze glial brain tumors. These tumors are particularly deadly because it’s hard to get rid of tumor cells by surgery, irradiation, and chemotherapy without substantial collateral damage to the surrounding brain tissue.

The researchers tested their method on samples of glial brain tumors from humans, finding that the histological detail in these images was as good — if not better — than those made with conventional staining techniques. They were able to make most images in under a minute. The smaller ones took less than a second, while larger images of a few square millimeters took five minutes. “This makes it possible to do it in real time in the operating room,” Groot said.

Now that they’ve shown their approach works, the researchers are developing a hand-held device that a surgeon can use to identify a tumor’s border during surgery. The incoming laser pulses can only reach a depth of about 100 micrometers into the tissue. To reach farther, Groot envisions attaching a needle that can pierce the tissue and deliver photons deeper.

“With our technique it’s potentially possible to diagnose not only during an operation but possibly before surgery,” she said.

[cellimagelibrary]

Image of the Week - May 23, 2016

CIL:38927 - http://www.cellimagelibrary.org/images/38927

Description: Scanning electron micrograph of the the fruiting body of bread mould. As the mould grows, it propagates itself by forming spores that are released into the environment and grow into new mould colonies.

Author: Liz Hurst

Licensing: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 UK: England & Wales (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 UK)

[whatshouldwecallgradschool]

WHEN I SPENT MY WHOLE WEEKEND AT LAB

[sciencesoup]

Citizen Science: Try this at home, kids

Reading about science on the internet is cool, sure, but sometimes you just want to get out there and contribute. Hundreds of citizen science projects are available across the world, both online and hands-on, and anyone who has an interest in science can have a go. I’ve compiled an incomplete list below, so check them out and get sciencing!

Biology

EterRNA: A puzzle game where players design models of DNA using four nucleotide bases, participating in the creation of a library of synthetic RNA designs

Phylo: A game that explores how DNA and RNA sequences are arranged

Foldit: A puzzle game where players fold proteins with the eventual aim of having players map the structures of unknown proteins and design new ones

Mapper: NASA gets players to analyse and tag photos from the bottoms of Pavilion Lake and Kelly Lake in British Columbia, studying microbialites and lake features in hopes of helping find life on other planets

AgeGuess: Guess people’s age in a simple game, which investigates the differences between perceived age and chronological age as a potential aging biomarker.

Natural Products Discovery Group: They’ll send you a soil collection kit to return, and they will then screen the fungi in the sample for bioactivity against a variety of diseases to help in drug development.

Animals

FrogWatch USA: Contribute to frog conservation all throughout the US

Global Bio Blitz, Amphibian and Reptile: A project that seeks to document species of amphibians and reptiles throughout the world

Center for Snake Conservation Snake Count: Tracks snake distribution across North America

Hawaii Sea Turtle Monitoring: Help NOAA monitor green and hawksbill turtles and invasive algae in Hawaii

Annual Midwest Crane Count: Join a force of thousands counting cranes across Winconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota

North American Amphibian Monitoring Program: Assesses frog and toad populations

eBird: A massive online database of bird observations that you can add to

Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count: The world’s oldest citizen science project takes place in December and January, mainly in the US and Canada but also in some places in the Western Hemisphere

Celebrate Urban Birds: Make ten-minute observations of birds in your neighbourhood to help investigate how birds inhabit urban areas

Great Backyard Bird Count: Exactly what it sounds like!

JellyWatch: Report your sightings of jellyfish, red tide, squid and other unusual marine animals throughout the world

Project Squirrel: A US and Canada census of gray and fox squirrels—upload pictures and observations of conditions

Whale Song Project: A Worldwide project where you can help analyse the recorded calls of killer whales and pilot whales

TurtleSAT: Help map freshwater turtle deaths throughout Australia

MantaMatcher: Upload observations of manta rays and work to identify them, building the first global online database for manta rays

iSeahorse: Upload your photos and observations of seahorses, help identify seahorse species, and advocate for their protection.

Insects

School of Ants: The study of ants living in urban areas all around the US (and there’s also an Australian version and an Italian version)

The Great Sunflower Project: Focused on bee conservation, participants grow Lemon Queen sunflowers and make regular observations to count bees that visit them during the blooming season

Native Buzz: Study the nesting preferences and distribution of solitary bees and wasps throughout the world

Dragonfly Pond Watch: Study the migrations of sixteen dragonfly species in North America

The Dragonfly Swarm Project: Contribute to the research of dragonfly swarms throughout the world

Butterflies and Moths of North America: This aims to collect data about butterflies and moths or their eggs, caterpillars, or cocoons or chrysalides.

The Lost Ladybug Project: Find and photograph ladybugs in your neighbourhood to help collect information about various ladybug species, especially the rapid shift in populations

Biodiversity

All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory: Document and identify plants and animals in your area across the US

iNaturalist: On this site you can share photos and details of plants and animals, and maintain lists of your discoveries worldwide

National Geographic BioBlitz: A twenty-four hour inventory of every living species in a specific area—check for an area near you.

The GLOBE Program: This project involves students of all ages and in all countries, teaching them how to collect scientific data and make scientific discoveries

Project NOAH: Document your observations about wildlife and plants around the world, and even get other people in the community to identify them

Wildlife Health Monitoring Network: Participants can help compile data about wildlife disease patterns around the world and how they might affect humans and domestic animals

Mushroom Observer: Less than 5% of the world’s fungi species are known to science, so help out by uploading images and observations of mushrooms and other fungi near you

Project BudBurst: Help collect data on plant phenology (when difference plants grow leaves and produce fruit) to show how different species in the US respond to changes in climate.

Explore the Sea Floor: Tag seafloor photos 

Atlas of Living Australia: Upload your observations to contribute to a database of biodiversity knowledge.

Track a Tree: Help record the progress of spring in woodlands across the UK. 

Project Splatter: Quantify and map wildlife roadkill across the UK

NatureWatchNZ: Upload your observations of wildlife across New Zealand

Citiclops: Upload photos of water colour throughout Europe, adding to climate and water colour data.

 Weather and Seasons

Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network: Measure rain—or lack thereof—in your area of the US to help track precipitation, predict floors, and plan for water supply and demand

Journey North: Help make observations of migrating animals in North America

IceWatch: A Canadian citizen science program, you can help by monitoring the freezing and thawing dates of freshwater lakes and rivers, thus building up data about how these cycles change 

Weather Detective: Uncover important weather records hidden in the logbooks of ships that sailed the seas around Australia in the 1890s and 1900s.

Astronomy

American Meteor Society Visual Observing Program: Meteor science is naked-eye amateurs can provide valuable data about meteors, meteor showers, fireballs and other phenomena

Galaxy Zoo: Examine real images of galaxies, classify them, and help determine how they form

Lowell Amateur Research Institute: There are a number of projects you can help out with, depending on what you’re interested in, your location, your time, and what software or equipment you have access to—most projects are aimed at serious amateur astronomers.

Moon Mappers: Analyse photos of the moon taken by the Linar Reconnaissance Orbiter

GLOBE at Night: By comparing the sky above you to charts provided by the project, you can help measure the impact of light pollution on the visibility of stars

Stardust@home: This is an online search for interstellar dust, using images of samples captured from the comet Wild 2 in 2004

Target Asteroids: Help compile information about Near Earth Asteroids (must have access to a telescope)

Planet Mercury: Mappers: Identify craters to assist in creating a global crater database

Asteroid Mappers: Map the surface of Vesta

Miscellaneous

Valley of the Khans Project: An online hunt for Genghis Khan’s tomb, examining high-resolution satellite images

Quantum Moves: Help build a quantum computer

Higgs Hunters: Help search for unknown exotic particles in the LHC data!

Zooniverse: This is a collection of projects, mostly in astronomy (like looking at infrared images to find star-forming regions, studying wind patterns on Mars, and classifying images of the Moon’s surface) but some in climate, nature and archaeology too (like transcribing papyri and classifying bat calls). Click through to read about them.

The list above was compiled with a focus on widespread projects that are available across continents and throughout the world, but there are so many more out there. Lots of them are local, so get researching and find out what else is in your area!

Note: I’ll be adding to the list as I find out about other projects, so if you know of one I’ve missed, please shoot me a message.

[sciencesoup]

Time to bring this back around! Get involved in real science without even leaving your house!

[straightboyfriend]

i need a tall boyfriend so he can get things for me off tall places

[straightboyfriend]

i changed my mind boys are demons ill buy a ladder

[peanuthead97]

X

[straightboyfriend]

i need a tall boyfriend so he can get things for me off tall places

[straightboyfriend]

i changed my mind boys are demons ill buy a ladder

[luvyourmane]

Thursday Inspiration! If you want it, create it!

So proud of Nate Parker! 👏👏👏👏 #goodmorning #luvyourmanemorninginspiration

[peanuthead97]

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?

Pencils

[neurosciencestuff]

Research reveals how the human brain might reconstruct past events

When remembering something from our past, we often vividly re-experience the whole episode in which it occurred. New UCL research funded by the Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust has now revealed how this might happen in the brain.

The study, published in Nature Communications, shows that when someone tries to remember one aspect of an event, such as who they met yesterday, the representation of the entire event can be reactivated in the brain, including incidental information such as where they were and what they did.

“When we recall a previous life event, we have the ability to re-immerse ourselves in the experience,” explains lead author Dr Aidan Horner (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience & Institute of Neurology). “We remember the room we were in, the music that was playing, the person we were talking to and what they were saying. When we first experience the event, all these distinct aspects are represented in different regions of the brain, yet we are still able to remember them all later on. It is the hippocampus that is critical to this process, associating all these different aspects so that the entire event can be retrieved.”

The researchers showed that associations formed between the different aspects of an event allow one aspect to retrieve all the other aspects, a process known as ‘pattern completion’. For example, when remembering who we saw, we often remember other details such as what they were holding and where they were. This means that the entire event can be re-experienced in full.

Using fMRI, the researchers showed that different aspects of an imagined event are reflected in activity in different regions of the brain. When asked about one aspect of an event, activity in the hippocampus correlates with reactivation in these regions, including those incidental to the task, and that this reactivation corresponds to the full event coming to mind.

“This work supports a long-standing computational model of how memory might work, in which the hippocampus enables different types of information to be bound together so that they can be imagined as a coherent event when we want to remember what happened,” says senior author Professor Neil Burgess. “It provides a fundamental insight into our ability to recollect what has happened, and may help to understand how this process can go wrong in conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease or post-traumatic stress disorder.”

The experiment involved 26 volunteers, who were asked to imagine and memorise a series of ‘events’ involving different locations, famous people and objects. They were then asked to remember the details of the event based on a single cue. For example, one trial ‘event’ involved US President Barack Obama in a kitchen with a hammer. Volunteers were then asked to remember details based on a single cue, such as ‘where was Obama?’, ‘who was in the kitchen?’ or ‘what object did Obama have?’. When asked to recall different aspects of events, volunteers underwent fMRI scans to measure their brain activity.

The results showed that different parts of the brain showed increased activity when encoding different aspects of each event, and that the hippocampus provides the critical links between them to form a complete memory. Using the previous example, activity increased in one part of the brain when volunteers thought of Obama, another when they thought of the kitchen and another when they thought of the hammer. The study showed that when asked ‘where was Obama?’ activity increased in the regions corresponding to Obama and Kitchen. Critically, activity also increased in the region corresponding to the hammer, despite no requirement to retrieve this item. This ‘reactivation’ correlated with hippocampal activity, suggesting the hippocampus is involved in retrieving the entire event.

The research is the first to provide evidence for this pattern completion process in the human hippocampus, and relate this to the everyday experience of recalling previous life events.